


In Sight of All

by Nabielka



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, F/F, F/M, Trick or Treat: Chocolate Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 14:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12459603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: Jokaste stumbles upon something unexpected, yet familiar.





	In Sight of All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lileura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lileura/gifts).



Relations with their northern neighbour had long been cold, and frequently hostile. This being so, the tales that reached Ios of Veretian habits and customs were not always to be trusted. It had, after all, turned out that the Prince of Vere did not keep his own harem, though under the circumstances Jokaste did not think it likely that that particular mistake would cause her problems. 

Still, she had expected to be startled at times by these Veretians who now strolled without a care under Akielon arches. She had not been prepared for this. 

Vannes, chief counsellor to that cold laced-up boy who now shared Damianos’ bed, had a woman in her lap. Jokaste did not know her name, but she recognised the hair, and knew her for Vannes’ pet at a glance. Her head was tilted back against her mistress’ shoulder, and her clothing had been unlaced, so that Jokaste, standing to their side, could gaze easily upon her breast, could make out even its brown areola. 

She would have deemed it a scene too private for even a slave to look upon, but the past year had taught her that what would not have passed in the provinces might be readily accepted at the royal court. Damianos did not pull away when one of his slaves entered, or rebuke her for her interruption. They at least were unaware, for the woman was shifting against Vannes’ lap; Vannes had her mouth bent to her ear, and throughout it all her hands never stilled. 

She had not a looking-glass, but Jokaste was sure her cheeks burned. She felt hot all over, looking at them, and yet found her gaze fixed there. 

She had heard a little of the Veretians’ lack of shame, tales of hands wandering in public, of pleasure taken before the eyes of the court. Still, she had never credited it much, for while in Akielos both sexes might walk around bare-breasted, and the slaves entirely divested of their attire, to see this as an invitation to air one’s private affairs so blatantly would have caused even a most favoured kyros to be sent away from the court. It was unthinkable to do more than tap a slave’s shoulder in silent command, and if one could not let one’s hands drift lower over one whose only role in life was submission to one’s desires, how could Veretians, however perverse, lay their hands on a free companion in the sight of all? 

But Vannes was touching hers with as much assurance as any lover might touch another behind closed doors. Her hand rubbed circles over the woman’s breast, and oh, how light her skin was in contrast to that which she stroked. Jokaste had never before understood Damen’s appreciation for those with looks so distanced from his own, that long line of fair blondes: herself, the prince du jour, anonymous slaves falling to prostrate themselves at his feet. 

Her other hand moved between large thighs. Jokaste’s eyes fixed on that: the bulge of the muscle as she moved, legs falling apart in pleasure, the move of her arms that revealed the power of her biceps. She felt, as she had felt before, looking at Damen, something that was not all admiration and not all resentment; the sight of a woman so physically powerful made the effect all the greater. She wanted to fall to her knees to worship her; she wanted to rage at the world for not having been born at the other side of the Vaskian mountains. 

But what good would it have done? No doubt the woman could have pushed her mistress off, had it been a case of that. The might of any lord’s fortress might still be called down against her, and even a warrior of Damen’s calibre fell, in the end, to superior numbers. It was her duty to submit, as it was the duty of any on whom fell an exalted eye. 

She herself had served her kings in two beds. Indeed, Damen had touched her much like that woman was being touched now, with her sat on his lap, save that the pet’s seat must have at least been more comfortable, and in any case, she could have no fear of a shift to a different type of fucking altogether. 

She was not conscious of it, but perhaps something in her breathing had changed, enough to be heard, for the councillor’s head tilted and Jokaste found herself making eye-to-eye contact with her. 

Those dark eyes fixed her to the spot. From this distance, she could not quite make out the expression on Vannes’ face, and wondered only whether she could see how flushed Jokaste’s was. She ought to have turned and gone on her way; she ought to have done so when she had first happened upon them, but instead she found herself fixed in place. 

The other woman had not noticed. Though her mistress’ gaze was fixed elsewhere, still she was fucking herself on her fingers, as though her only focus in life was the pursuit of pleasure. Perhaps it was: Jokaste knew nothing of Veretian law except that it did not grant bastards an inheritance; never had she perused a pet contract for its demands. Companionship, certainly, both public and private. The giving over of certain rights to another, but that came without an explicit commitment when one’s lover was a prince. 

She ought to have gone. She half expected to be called out for it, for all that she was not the one who was misusing this part of the castle. With what the Veretian ambassador had once termed Akielon sensibilities, she rather expected Vannes to stop. 

She did not. Turning her face away from Jokaste and towards the woman in her lap, her hands returned to their previous tasks. Jokaste could not make out her fingers individually, but she could see how the rest of her arm moved as a result of her caresses, could see the breast even more luxuriously revealed as the woman arched back against her mistress. They really were nice breasts, and the way Vannes cupped it made one of them look nicer still. 

Damen had liked her breasts too. They would lie in his bed of a morning and he would fondle them, not devoting any attention to one of his slaves attending to some other task in the room. He thought only coitus counted, not such idling, and that besides, a slave was too lowly to matter. For her part, Jokaste could never silence the part of her brain that remained aware throughout of a foreign presence in the room, and though all slaves bowed their heads as a matter of course, still she could not escape the feeling that she was being looked at, and the feeling of it was like something crawling over her skin. 

The woman here showed no sign of discomfort. It was apparent that Vannes was skilled, as Damen had been skilled, or perhaps it was just that she was used to it. Perhaps in Vere it was not a case of stumbling upon something, but rather such casual voyeurism was merely part of court life.

Or perhaps, thought Jokaste with a burst of anger, it was only that being now a councillor to the new king, Vannes thought herself enough above her not to care. Her own fortunes had fallen with Kastor’s so that they might not fall with Damen’s, though however Damen had changed, still she could not think him so cruel as to do to her what his own brother had done to him. Still, the memory of his words in the baths chilled her at night: _What have you done?_

 _Nothing_ , she had said, and if that had not been entirely true, it had not been entirely a lie either. And now Vannes, who held power now by some unknown virtue that was at least not the use of her body by others, treated her presence like nothing too. 

That was worse. Her cheeks burned as though she had been slapped at the humiliation, and it was this that finally pushed Jokaste to turn and cringing, step lightly away from them, even as behind her the woman whose body she had seen half-revealed, but whose name she still did not know, cried out as she came.


End file.
